'By th' mark ten, sir!'
Bolitho heard Herrick whispering with Grubb, someone's pencil squeaking on a slate as the depth was recorded.
Bolitho knew that the Indomitable, next astern, was very dose, but was afraid to climb to the poop and seek her out. It was as if he would miss something, or by turning away he might leave a gap in his own defences.
Surely the Danish batteries would be expecting something like this? He knew it was unlikely but, nevertheless, found it hard to accept. No admiral in his right mind would attempt to lead a fleet through the narrows under thosepowerful guns, so what would be the point of sending a mere handful like Bolitho's?
It had sounded all right in the cabin, but as the brooding shoreline hardened still further towards the larboard bow it was less easy to digest.
He thought of the leading boat pulling well ahead of the men-of-war. Busy with lead and line, watching for a prowling guard-boat, listening for an unusual sound. It must be like a black desert. He wondered which lieutenant was in charge. He had not asked. If he needed their trust, he must trust them also.
The boats had been cast off an hour before they had reached the start of the narrows. The oarsmen would be getting tired now, more conscious of their fatigue than the need for absolute vigilance.
He stepped back from the rail, cursing himself for his anxieties. It was done.
Herrick stepped out of the gloom. 'Seems fairly quiet, sir.'
`Yes. My guess is that the Danes have made such massive preparations for a frontal attack on the port that they are as reluctant as we are to move in the darkness.'
A few more hours and Nelson's ships would be roused and under way, ready to follow the same route through the Sound Channel and then head for an anchorage at Hven Island where they could lick their wounds before the final assault on the Danish forts and blockships.
The heads along the larboard gangway bobbed together with sudden urgency until the last man in the chain called, 'Shoal on the larboard bow, sir!'
Herrick snapped, 'Bring her up a point, Mr Grubb.'
Bolitho resisted the temptation to join some of the ninepounder crews at the nettings as they peered down into the darkness. It must have been Benbow's second cutter which had seen and signalled the danger.
Sails rustled together as the yards were trimmed, and Bolitho looked across to the opposite beam, wondering if any sleepy sentry had noticed the cutter's shaded lantern as the warning was flashed to the flagship.
But he doubted if the Danes were very different from Englishmen. It took a lot to get a sentry to rouse his officer and possibly the whole garrison merely because he thought he had seen something. Whole campaigns, let alone one fight, had been lost and won because of military protocol.
He pictured Wolfe somewhere up there in the bows. The first lieutenant had no particular duty for the moment. His experience, his hoard of skills gained in every sea in the world, was enough. He might see or feel something. Sense some dangerous shallows perhaps which even the leadsmen had missed.
Herrick murmured, 'How many of these miniature gunboats d'you reckon we'll find, sir?'
'The exact number is not known, Thomas. But more than twenty, and that is too many. Vice-Admiral Nelson intends to anchor eventually at the Middle Ground Shoal before he doses with the Danish ships. He will do it, no matter what we discover. But if those galleys can work through his line of battle, it could be disastrous.'
`Deep twelve!'
Grubb sighed. `That's more like it.' He even managed a chuckle.
As one hour dragged into the next, it felt to Bolitho as if he had been carrying some great weight. Each one of his muscles ached with strain, and he knew it was affecting everyone from captain to ship's boy.
There were several startled cries as a boat moved sluggishly down the starboard side. But it was one of the squadron's, the oarsmen bent double across their looms, barely able to breathe from exhaustion. A lieutenant, his white lapels very clear in the darkness, waved up at the flagship, and a marine said huskily, `We're through, sir! That's what he said!'
Herrick said quietly, 'Pass the word! Not a sound, d'you hear? They'll begin to cheer otherwise, it'd be just like them!' He looked at Bolitho, his teeth bared in a grin. `I feel a bit that way myself, sir!
Bolitho gripped his hands together to steady his nerves. Not a shot fired not a man lost. It would be different in daylight when the main fleet started its advance.
`Give it another turn of the glass, Thomas. Then we can recall the boats.'
Grubb said, 'Dawn'll be up in two hours, sir.' He rubbed his red hands together. 'I'm fair parched after that little lot!'
Herrick laughed. 'I understand, Mr Grubb. Pass the word to the purser. Break out a double tot of rum for each man, and no arguments from that miser or I'll skin him alive!'
Bolitho felt the tension draining away around him, even though the fight was still to come. Benbow was through, and that was something each man could understand. As Allday had remarked, they fought for each other, not some plan from high authority.
The half-hour glass squeaked round beside the compass and Grubb said, 'Time, sir.'
Herrick called, 'Tell the cutter to inform Indomitable that we are recalling the boats.'
Bolitho could imagine the relief in the various boats as the message was passed down the line. There would be a few blisters and aching backs when daylight found them.
Bolitho felt a tankard being put into his hands and heard Browne say, 'Don't fret, sir. 'Tis brandy, not rum. I know you do not take kindly to that,!'
Bolitho was about to reply when he felt some of the spirit splash across his fingers and realized Browne was shaking. 'What is wrong?'
Browne looked towards the hidden land. 'What is wrong? You can ask that, sir?' He tried to laugh it off. 'I am a fair hand at matters of ceremonial and Admiralty duty. I can use a sword or pistol better than most, and can hold my own at the tables.' He shuddered. 'But this sort of thing, this dreadful, long-drawnout crawl towards hell, I have no stomach for it, sir!'
'It will pass.' Bolitho was shocked to see Browne in such distress.
Browne said quietly, 'I was just thinking. It will be the first of April tomorrow. By the end of the second day I might be nothing!'
'You are not alone. Everyone in this ship, except the mindless fool, will be thinking like that.'
`You, too, sir?'
`Aye. I feel it now, just as I fear it.' He tried to shrug. `But I have taught myself to accept it.'
He watched Browne move away into the shadows and reflected on his words.
The first day of April. In Cornwall it would be green again, the snow and mist gone for another year. He could almost smell the hedgerows, the richer aromas of the farms.
And the house would be waiting, as it had done so often for a hundred and fifty years, for a Bolitho to return home.
Stop it now! It was useless to wallow in false hope and selfpity.
He stared up at the mizzen truck but his flag was still lost against the dull clouds.
It was chilling to accept that this small group of ships contained the last two sailors of the Bolitho family.
Lieutenant Wolfe strode to the nettings, his head cocked, as the first rumble of gunfire rolled over the ships like thunder.
'By God, listento that!'
On the gundeck many of the seamen were standing back from the long eighteen-pounders to stare aft at the officers, as if to determine what was happening.
Bolitho shaded his eyes and glanced up at the masthead lookouts. At first light he had managed to overcome his hatred of heights to climb as high as the maintop and watch the Danish shoreline, the towers and steeples misty and unreal. With the aid of a telescope, and watched curiously by the marine marksmen there, he had studied the span of Copenhagen 's defences.
His own small squadron had no intention of drawing within range of the many batteries arranged along the coast. His duty was to find the galleys and destroy as many of them as possible before they could join in the fight.
From his many written instructions he knew much of what Nelson would have to face. At least eighteen moored ships, presenting an impregnable line of fixed broadsides, and the massive Three Crowns battery on Amager Island
